First off, let me say how much I’ve enjoyed spending my Friday mornings captioning images of The Gang and discussing depraved hilarity with you guys. It’s been an honor.

Last night’s Season 8 finale, “Reynolds Vs. Reynolds: The Cereal Defense,” captured a lot of the same brilliance as last season’s “Chardee MacDennis” — minus the chaos — and clearly established that the show can go into a ninth season without missing a beat. S8 has been quite the accomplishment. A few notes from “Reynolds Vs. Reynolds: The Cereal Defense”.

I would go out and buy a Garmin right this second if there was a Charlie Day voice option.

For a brief moment during the first commercial break I was stricken with fear at the idea that Charlie wouldn’t be playing attorney. Of course my concern was wiped away in the very next scene and we were blessed with gems like “Persecuting” and “Common sense is on trial.” Law & Order Charlie Kelly will never ever get old.

I’m totally with Dee in assuming the defendant is guilty. Why else would they be on trial?

Absolutely kills me that I wasn’t cast as “random guy drinking beer at the bar during trial.”

I’m ashamed to admit I had to look up whether or not Pennsylvania is actually a commonwealth.

Tommy Bahama Meter – As we’ve been discussing when and where Mac now wears his Fat Mac shirts, I feel after last night’s finale it is safe to conclude that it is completely and utterly random, which makes the gag a nice metaphor for S8’s mixture of callbacks and new material. There’s no rhyme or reason to anything. Just like life.

On a final note, FX was cool enough to provide us with a Season 7 Blu-Ray to award to one extraordinary audience member. Congrats to the always active Lobster Mobster for earning the most Sunny badges throughout these recaps and therefore taking home the prize. The Sunniest moments…

Dennis’s “Yeah I probably have a…” trail-off reaction was just perfect. And Frank of course doesn’t want near a courtroom due to all his unregistered guns (a joke only Sunny wouldn’t pull in the current climate). Which is of course why Reynolds vs. Reynolds requires…

A Trial Meter

Only in The Gang’s world (and religious cults) are verdicts determined solely on sentiment towards the plaintiff and defendant as opposed to actual facts. Which, if you’re the maybe-plaintiff, may cause a harsh reaction…

“It means to have the brains of a donkey or a donkey type creature.”

It’s official: Donkey Brain debates are my favorite debates. I need the entire sequence in a YouTube clip, like yesterday. Until that happens though here are some choice lines:

Sweet Dee – “That is an official document with ‘donkey brain’ written on it?”

Charlie – “Do you have any such certificate?”

Charlie – “How do we know you’re not a donkey-brained man?”

Mac – “You may have donkey brains. I don’t know.”

Mac Damages His Credibility

After thwarting Dee’s line of X-Men questioning, Mac does significant damage to his own credibility — and influence over Charlie — when Dennis gets him to reveal his thoughts on evolution, which leads us to A) pondering if Ronald McDonald is a metaphor for the hard right, and B) quite possibly the greatest Sunny GIF of all time…

I was very happy to see Charlie actually successfully be a lawyer when it came to the Donkey Brains argument. I thought for sure Charlie would make up something completely incoherent; which he did; but I was not expecting him to be successful with it. That was great.

I thought I liked this episode, but I don’t have a certificate officially authorizing me of not having Donkey Brains…so maybe I’m just some Donkey Brained-idiot. My whole world has been turned upside-down.

I almost expected bird law references out the wazoo since this forum has indoctrinated and convinced me on the whole callback season thesis If this entire season was a callback I am actually quite satisfied with the restraint shown in most episodes to not go for the obvious throwback references.Bravo season 8.

It’s funny. This may have been my favorite episode of the season. These bottle gang-only weirdness episodes always do if for me and slapping history’s most renowned thinkers with “bitch” labels is pretty much the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

I’ve been surprised to see how many people tag different episodes as “favorite” throughout the season. Every week someone makes mention that it was the best of the season. I think it means they didn’t churn out a miss in all ten.

Oh, I know he mispronounced SO many. It’s just that while he was doing it he kept adding the perfect pauses. I was waiting for what was coming next and I COULDN’T BREATHE. It was done so perfectly it reminded me of Grotesco’s parody which made me laugh harder pairing the two.

Unsupervised has been pretty unfunny most of the time, but I have to admit that last night’s episode was really good, just the opening sequence was glorious!
A really fantastic comedy night from FX, merry christmas to us!

I had my eye on the lonely bar patron the whole episode and was dying at the fact that he was just carrying on drinking minding his own business while all this ridiculousness was unfolding in front of him, but was still classy enough to throw out a “Thanks guys!” as he left.
The Gang’s indifference to whether he even paid for his beer or not was golden

I was watching him the whole time too. Hey, Paddy’s has a customer! Then I noticed his drink almost empty and started to worry. Then after the commercial, it had been refilled. They actually serve and refill drinks at Paddy’s!

Christina Haberkern (on the certificate) does props for the show. She posted the pic on her tumblr, and noted that “Not only is my Haberkern brand beer in almost every episode now; I also certified that Frank does indeed NOT have “donkey brains”” I’m sure this has been noticed before, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it.

Noah Mathers, the other name, is a sound mixer according to iMDB, but I don’t see any credits for Sunny.

This show, as well as The League, is really really good at sneaking it little self references like that, I love it! It is rewarding for us TV nerds who watch those shows religiously, they know how to cater to their audience.